New Book Details Fdr's Impact On Collecting

STAMPS

As most collectors know, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was a passionate philatelist.

His contributions to stamp collecting transformed the hobby forever.

By the time he was elected president in 1932, the entire nation knew of his interest in stamps.

Virtually overnight what had been considered a child's hobby came of age. Americans who had collected stamps in secret proudly displayed their collections.

Those who had not collected developed an interest in the pastime.

"Until now," however, says Donna O'Keefe of Linn's Stamp News, "no book [was) devoted entirely to the postage stamps issued during the presidency of FDR."

O'Keefe, Linn's book editor, recently unveiled a new volume, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Stamps of the United States 1933-45, written by Brian C. Bauer, an FDR-era specialist, and published by Linn's.

The book recalls FDR's involvement and enthusiasm for stamps and is a complete reference work on all the stamps issued during his administration.

Roosevelt participated in all aspects of U.S. stamps during his 12 years in office.

He personally approved more than 200 issues and some of the designs he sketched himself on White House stationery. Readers of the book will learn, among other things:

-- About the U.S. Post Office Department scandal in which Postmaster General James A. Farley presented specially printed stamps as gifts to Roosevelt and other high-ranking officials.

-- How FDR worked to change outdated laws that barred philatelic publishers from printing pictures of U.S. stamps in catalogs and on album pages.

-- How a new cancellation die that read "First Day of Issue" between the horizontal "killer bars" changed the face of first-day-cover collecting.

-- About a contest in which the public was invited to design a new stamp. The winning entry became a model for the 1938 presidential series. The 1-cent George Washington definitive in that series was the first U.S. stamp not designed by a government employee.

-- How, in order to raise the spirits of the war-weary Chinese in 1942, Roosevelt requested a stamp that included words written in Chinese. This was the first U.S. stamp to use a foreign language as part of its central theme.

Each of the 73 chapters of the 376-page book features a stamp or a series of stamps issued during the FDR years.

Each chapter begins with technical details for every stamp, including the designer, plate numbers and varieties.

Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Stamps of the United States 1933-45 is available in two editions from stamp dealers or directly from Linn's Stamp News, Box 29, Sidney, Ohio 45365.

A limited hardcover version costs $30; softcover is $14.95, both postpaid.